using behavioral economics to do good

Michael S. Barr is a member of ideas42′s Scientific Advisory Board. He is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, where he teaches Financial Institutions and International Finance, among other courses. Barr is also a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution.

Barr was on leave from 2009-2010, serving as the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions. He was a key architect of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

As an academic, Barr conducts large-scale empirical research regarding financial services and low- and moderate-income households and researches and writes about a wide range of issues in financial regulation. He is author of No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans (Brookings Press, 2012), and the co-editor of Insufficient Funds (Russell Sage, 2009, with Blank), and Building Inclusive Financial Systems (Brookings Press, 2007, with Kumar and Litan). Other recent publications include An Opt-Out Home Mortgage System, Behaviorally Informed Financial Services Regulation, Third-Party Tax Administration, An Inclusive Progressive National Savings and Financial Services Policy, Credit Where it Counts, Banking the Poor, Microfinance and Financial Development, and Global Administrative Law: The View from Basel.

He previously served as Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin’s Special Assistant, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, as Special Advisor to President William J. Clinton, as a special advisor and counselor on the policy planning staff at the State Department, and as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and Judge Pierre N. Leval, then of the Southern District of New York.

Barr received his J.D. from Yale Law School, his M.Phil. in international relations from Magdalen College, Oxford University, as a Rhodes Scholar, and his B.A., summa cum laude, with honors in history, from Yale University.